The events I’m about to share with you are insane, and if they hadn’t happened to me, I probably would have trouble believing them.
But it’s essential you pay attention.
I never thought there was a wrong and right way to breathe. But on the Eve of my 40th birthday, my breathing pattern was the thing that sent me straight to the ER, with a severe heart attack.
My only problem was chaotic blood pressure. We could never identify the cause, but it didn’t seem like a big issue at the time. Doctors just thought that I was stressed, and that caused my blood pressure to spike.
A regular guy, with no major signs that I’m unhealthy. Except for a dangerous habit I was unaware of, that was slowly killing me…
And nobody noticed. Not me, my wife, or my doctor
Right before my 40th birthday, I was doing some chores around the house to prepare for the big party the next day. I was pretty active, but no more than usual. I went up the stairs to the attic to get something. When I got up there, I suddenly started to feel dizzy and hot, like my blood was boiling on the inside. Then it came, that gut wrenching pain in your arm that tells you immediately what’s happening to you.
A heart attack.
I woke up in a hospital bed a few hours later, with doctors poking me with all sorts of things.
‘What happened?’ I said, barely getting out the words.
‘Sir, you had a heart attack.’ Said one of the nurses. ‘You’re fine now, but we need to do more tests to see what caused it.’
I think I saw 6 different cardiologists and went through every test known to man – twice. Nobody could figure out why my heart gave out all of the sudden, considering I was not that old, and had no family history of heart disease.
By now, my blood pressure had gone through the roof. Doctors were scratching their heads trying to figure out what my body trying to do to me…
The answer came from a pulmonologist, a doctor who specializes in lung diseases. The only issue everyone could agree on is that my body was not getting enough oxygen, but they couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason.
The doctor ordered an X-ray on my lungs, and was shocked to see how inflamed they were. You see, he noticed I had an irregular breathing pattern. My air intake was too shallow to ensure my body was getting enough oxygen…
And when you don’t give your body enough oxygen, it slowly begins to die. The first to be affected was my heart, but if I didn’t catch it when I did, other parts of my body would have been caught in the crossfire too.
Millions of people in the US suffer from lung conditions every year. And for a lot of them, their health deteriorates simply because they have an irregular breathing pattern they are not aware of, or are dismissing. Not to mention the probably millions of other people, like me, with health problems that seem in no way connected to how you breathe…
Mine was shallow breathing.